I’m on Google!

Well, not this blog, but my new one Aliens! Monsters! and Robots! is!…That’s a lot of exclamation marks, anyhow, if you search for that it comes up, and to prove it and also because it’s possibly the coolest thing ever, i took a handy screenshot:

So yeah, I thought that qualified a post.

 

New Blogcomic

Is that a word? This is the internet, I’m sure noone will notice.  Anyhow, I’m starting up a webcomic and I just posted the first one. I think it’s pretty funny, but we’ll see if I’m just crazy. You should go check it out, bookmark it, leave a comment, whatever. It should be updated about once a week, so stop by every now and then.

I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun to do and I hope it gets a fair amount of traffic, if not, I’ll probably keep posting anyway.

 

It’s been 4 days

Four whole days of worrying about whether my bowels will be perforated or not. All my friends keep telling me to calm down when I bring it up…they have obviously not ingested a soda tab before. I mean maybe I’m being hypochondriac about all this, but I mean, I read people have died from this kind of thing (thanks for the encouragement WebMd!…). When I’m not dead in a week I’ll assume nothing bad will happen and the threat level will decrease; until then, everytime I go I have the hospital on speed dial.

 

This is not good…

Last night I was at a friends apartment hanging out and listening to music. I had a can of coke and I inadvertantly dropped the tab in when I took it off…no big deal right? Well not when I was hurried at the very end to get going and took one monstorous swig to drain it and swallowed, yes, swallowed the pop tab. I’m no medical professional, but I can tell this is going to be ugly. In case you’re wondering, updates are absolutely coming.

 

New Design Pieces

So here’s some designs I made for the Harmonic Abstraction Assignment in my Graphic Design class.

[edit] I’m having some trouble getting them to load, you might have to refresh the page a few times, I’m working on resizing them, sorry.

These designs are based around using art to make people more aware of our global warming situation.
If you like them, leave a comment!

Also, here’s a few sites revolving around “green design” and the like:
Green Design Newsletter
Design 21
Article on Freelance Switch

*Please don’t steal these, you can use them if you ask

 

New Single from Death Cab for Cutie

So here’s the new single from Death Cab’s new album “Narrow Stairs”, the epic “I will possess your heart. What do you guys think? * Is it more like the old “Something about Airplanes” and ” We have the facts, and we’re voting yes”  or the newer “Transatlantasicm” and “Plans”?  The album drops on the 13th (of April) and I think the band is going farther and farther from what they used to sound like. Is that a bad thing? It depends. If you’re one of those people who shout curses at the neighbors when they paint their house or when theirs road work and a detour is involved, and you listen to the early Death Cab religiously, then no, you’ll hate it. But if you like to hear a band’s sound age and mature through the years along with its members, then I think you’ll be into it.  At any rate, here it is.
http://mog.com/Michael_Goldberg/blog_post/150691

*Does anyone actually read this? Please leave comments, they make me feel special

 

Review:Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings

Has it really been six years since Hard Candy? On their fifth album, not counting their live and compilation albums, the band splits the record into two parts, the very rock and roll “Saturday Nights” and the melancholy, introspective “Sunday Mornings”.

In my personal opinion, Counting Crows put out nothing but great work and this album is no different. From the very first song it’s apparent that frontman Adam Duritz has been writing extensively and I wonder just how much had escaped his genius cranium onto paper; it’s always been a little dream of mine that one day he’ll put out a book of poetry and maybe then everyone will finally realize his true genius. On the opening track “1492″, Adam croons in the bridge using the idiom “In fourteen-hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue”, but then continues the story with “In fourteen-hundred ninety-three, he sailed across the deep blue sea, In fourteen-hundred ninety-four, he did it with the girl next door, In fourteen-hundred ninety-five, he barely made it back alive.” Followed by “I’m the king of everything, I’m the king of nothing”, a line derived from the song “Rain King” on “August and Everything After”, their initial album. On the first half of the album, the Crows stretch their obvious rootsy-rock and roll legs made definitive by their heroes The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Band, and early R.E.M.. The song “Los Angeles” was co-written by close friend of the band and Duritz, Ryan Adams, and his hand shows in that song without being overbearing.

Moving on to the second half of the album, “Sunday Mornings”, starts with the guitar and sparse piano track “Washington Square”, then the guitar and harmonica “On Almost Any Sunday Morning” reminiscient of early Crows songs like “A Long December” or “Anna Begins”, lyrically at least. I can’t choose a favorite track between “Cowboys” and  “When I dream of Michealangelo”. So much of this song [Michealangelo] is sobering and spine-tingling; the line ” I want a whitebread life, just something ignorant and plain, but from the walls of Michealangelo I’m dangelin again”. What? Thats the best line I’ve heard in a long time and it makes me shiver. So many people today simply want just that, a whitebread plain life thinking that the perfect life is something like a Michealangelo painting. Of course, I could be wrong, but thats what I take from this song.

The album closes with a bit more happy note than the somber “Sunday Mornings” mood with “Come Around”, a song about love and it’s ever tumultuous nature. I think it’s easy to just pass this off as a record that should’ve been made thirty years ago and move on to newer, shinier, happier records, but that would be the ultimate tragedy. In this record Adam maneuvers through rough territory telling stories of incredibly despondent people and how we all, as humans, have the same emotions and through the glitz and glamour of what we call life today, there are the ultimate tragedies of loss, death and addiction.

All in all I can’t recommend this album more to anyone. Is everyone going to get it? I don’t think so, but years and years from now, this is one of those records that defines the bands’ career and stands out as a beacon of real music in a time where iPods fill up with thousands of unlistened to songs and the radio is overrun with the likes of Nickleback and the like.

9.5/10

Song Picks:

Hanging Tree
Cowboys
You Can’t Count On Me
When I Dream of Michealangelo

 

Pistol

I love this song, It’s great! I don’t like Thrice at all, but Dustin’s solo album is really good.

 

Party Time

Break out the red party cups and plates! Its 5 and people are supposed to be getting here around 6. Maybe some rockband? Maybe some fantastic Hebrew National dogs? Maybe monsoon-like, torrential rain? Of course! It’s My birthday! ….sort of.

Also, I was under the assumption that it was scientific fact that when boys turned nineteen, a switch flipped and they immediately sprouted thick, full, facial hair. This is not so. I’m filing a complaint somewhere.

Side note, I received Capote from Dave on my birthday and I watched it. Wow. I really want to write more short stories.

 

My Last Day Being Eighteen

And it’s just as uneventful as expected. But what was I thinking was going to happen? Balloons and confetti falling from the ceiling and neon lights saying “Your last day being eighteen, don’t take it for granted!”?  But despite that not happening, today is still monumental being that I’ll never be this age again and I’ll never be at this moment in my life again. But isn’t everyday like that? Everyday you get up, you’ll never be at that moment in your life again, you’ll never be able to take that moment back, that day back, that week back, that year back. All those moment start to stack up and pick up speed it seems like. Of course this is frustrating, but it’s also inspiring. It’s changed me. Me and my philosophy at least.

Also, I don’t like to celebrate my birthday. I really don’t. It’s not the attention, it’s not the gifts, it’s that you’re taking one day out of the year to not take for granted. Shouldn’t you live everyday? Shouldn’t you appreciate more than a few days out of the year to enjoy being alive? Everybody says it, but these last couple years it’s really set in. I think it’s mostly close adult friends and relatives always telling me to enjoy it with a tiny sparkle of reverie in their eyes. So that’s what I’ve been trying to do. I’m not going to stay eighteen forever, I’m not even going to stay eighteen for next few hours. Then what happens? I’ll go on a limb and say nothing. I want to tell some idiot kid with idiot dreams to live when I’m grey. He’s not going to appreciate it, I don’t think many ever do.

So here’s to you eighteen. I won’t ever forget you. You were a long, lonesome, and hard year, but that’s none of your doing. I graduated from prison highschool. I started at the federal prison college. I realized what it was to be a monk an artist.